


Concessions

by Harukami



Category: Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne
Genre: Gen, Neutral Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-28
Updated: 2013-11-28
Packaged: 2018-01-02 21:04:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1061626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harukami/pseuds/Harukami
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Neutral ending, the protagonist makes some concessions to help his friends overcome the seeds that once blossomed into Reasons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Concessions

It was funny: creating a new world made him feel responsible for a new world. Even if it was a new world which was a remake of the old (or, to be honest, a new world which was a re- _take_ on the old; nearly identical, but with concessions here and there. That was what free will was about, wasn't it? Demanding reality make concessions to you. He'd never been sure before all this, but so it had seemed to be).

Before all this, he had never been someone who considered free will particularly strongly. He drifted, and lacked ideology of his own. Having to determine what ideologies he couldn't side with was something, at least. Was it his lack that had Kagutsuchi choose him for the new world? For the child and the old gentleman to change him and twist him into their schemes...? Ultimately, he became not someone who chose ideologies but who filtered them.

Being that filter was still significant; being the final arbiter of a new world left him feeling like it must be his responsibility to take care of -- well, not the world, exactly. He could only ever affect what was directly in front of him -- and that had driven his friends to choose their Reasons in the Vortex World. In the wrong place to help Chiaki or to stop her. In the wrong place to protect Isamu or to support him. So Chiaki had to develop an obsession with strength to survive; Isamu had to develop a conception of himself as alone -- but here back in the normal world, they were back to normal too.

Except they weren't, and that's the part he felt responsible for.

Neither of them talked about it, but he was very sure they remembered. It was in the way Chiaki would cross her left arm across her body to touch her right arm sometimes, when she thought nobody was watching. It was the way Isamu would curl up and hug his knees when he was over and they were watching TV or something. He noticed these things and wondered, sometimes, if he shouldn't bring it up. Just talk about that time. Talk about how the darkness was too complete for him at night now and he felt strange not providing his own light. How terribly alone he felt, sometimes, without worms curling in his body and offering him power and whispering their meanings to him and shaking and shaking. To ask how much they remember, what parts stick with them. But he doesn't.

Instead, he just tried to keep in mind that the ideas in them which became Reasons when they were pushed aren't things that came out of nowhere. Even with their circumstances, they were seeds of how they viewed and reacted to the world. How else could they remake the world in their image? Strength and solitude -- those were their filters. 

He couldn't affect the whole world, but they were in front of him. And he couldn't fix anyone, of course. But he could call on Isamu without warning, stop by his place, email him and tell him to come out here. Remind him that someone was taking an interest in his life. Sometimes they wouldn't talk at all; sometimes they'd lapse into a silence, Isamu with his head tilted back and eyes closed, and himself just thumbing through a book or browsing his computer. But he'd turn pages, type, breathe regularly, enough to remind Isamu that their worlds were intersecting. If Isamu wanted some quiet time, some time shutting people out, that was fine, but he wouldn't let him think he was alone.

Chiaki was harder, though Chiaki always had been. Proud, strong Chiaki, quick to give orders and quick to anger, had always been harder to manage than self-deprecating, obliging Isamu. She wasn't someone who would give up power without longing to have power of her own, so he didn't try that. And it was true that people needed power in this world -- especially pretty, diminutive girls like Chiaki, the targets of violence and insults and envy. Trying to protect her would only make the insult worse, and make her wish more to be able to be her own strength. Instead, all he could do was try to offer his help when available, be there if desired, but not try to pressure her if not. And sometimes, she'd take him up on it, walk away and let him handle some situation or another. So she could rest -- what it came from, he remembered, was her exhaustion with having to put up a strong front and survive. That first time they'd met again in the Vortex world, she'd groaned out that she was so _tired_ , and trying to survive in a world full of demons was part of that, but real life could be full of demons, too. He couldn't become her strength, or undercut her strength, but he could try to build spaces for her to rest. She, too, came over sometimes, and chatted calmly about this or that which she was reading, about the applications she'd sent for university, and he will give her room for that.

And sometimes it is both of them over at once, and he thinks that perhaps things may be like old times -- not entirely, of course. The concessions he made are around them, around forming gaps when they need him there, about putting spaces there where he can fit himself into on time. If they call, he's not going to show up late again, like that fateful day at the hospital. If they call, he'll be there. And if he calls, they come, too, and sit with him on his couch, and drink with him, and don't talk about what happened at all.


End file.
